EATING INSECTS. 147 



blossoms, and, when these were unexpanded, 

 gnawed their way into the bud. *• 



There can be no doubt, however, that when the 

 summer is more advanced, and the young broods of 

 earwigs have left their mothers, "f they commit simi- 

 lar depredations upon flowers to those of the young 

 slugs in the spring. ' The Enghsh women,' says 

 Mouffet, ' hate them exceedingly, because of the 

 flowers of clove gilliflovvers that they eat and spoyl, 

 and they lay snares for them thus : they set in the 

 utmost void places ox-hoofs, hogs-hoofs, or old cast 

 things that are hollow, upon a staff* fastened into 

 the ground, and these are easily stuffed with cloathes 

 or straw ; and when by night the earwigs creep 

 into these to avoid the rain or hide themselves, in 

 the morning these old cast things being suddenly 

 taken away and shook forth, a great multitude of 

 them fall, and are killed with treading upon them.' J 

 The bowls of tobacco-pipes, or the claws of lobsters 

 stuck upon the top of the sticks supporting flowers, 

 are the usual methods for entrapping earwigs in 

 the vicinity of London ; and we recollect being not 

 a little puzzled to conjecture what was the meaning 

 of sticking up some dozens of lobsters' claws over 

 a flower-border ; for, upon the notion that, like the 

 broken tea-cups ranged on the mantel-piece of Gold- 

 smith's village ale-house, they were meant 



' For ornament, and not for use,' 



we deemed the taste of the suburban Londoners not 

 a little singular. 



But though vegetable substances seem to be the 

 staple food of earwigs, they not only upon occa- 

 sion show carnivorous, but even cannibal, propensi- 

 ties, for we have more than once given a dead ear- 



* J. R, t See Insect Transformations, p. 102. 



t Theatre of Insects, by Maserne, p. 1023. 



